A classic text every person who wants to create a better world for all should read.

Extremely difficult book to rate because I found the concepts within very valuable but the writing was incredibly dense and repetitive. It's a book that's difficult to read but ultimately worth struggling through, I think, but it could be written in a more digestible way.

The real value in the book is not its readability but its spirit. Regardless of how I felt about Freire's perspective, I found it was a valuable perspective to read. The writing of Pedagogy of the Oppressed may not be digestible, but it is undoubtedly full of Freire's love for humanity and his resulting passion to better the world. Some of his concepts and writings didn't land for me, but Freire nonetheless gave me thoughts about how I can offset some of the abundant oppression in society as both an educator and a human.

In that sense, I feel Pedagogy of the Oppressed, whether intentional on Freire's part or not, managed to avoid being a book that deposited pedagogical concepts into me and instead stimulated my own interest in problem-solving. To me, this book is best read as Freire's interpretation and perspective of the struggles he faced as an educator rather than an instruction manual. His perspective is respectable and worthwhile, but I think it is ultimately one of many valuable perspectives to take into account.

I think it's a good, important book to read for a more wholesome grasp of how to approach oppression, especially as far as education is concerned. My only real gripe is, again, the writing quality.

my biggest problem with the book, as it is with other academic works in general, is when an author takes generally simple and easy to understand ideas and couches them in overly complicated language. i think that bothered me with this book particularly given that the idea behind it all is really to get a community to learn together and work together to move forward toward a non-oppressive society, but if you have something as interesting as this in language that isn't accessible to everyone, you just end up perpetuating an uneven power structure yet again.

A must-read for those interested in social justice, poverty, and human-driven development.